


Keep

by Khashana, read by Khashana (Khashana)



Series: Disrespect!verse [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Autistic Zuko, Enemies to Friends, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Podfic, Podfic Length: 10-20 Minutes, Podfic and fic together, Sokka’s protecting people thing manifests as possessive friendship, Sort Of, but then, mechanical engineering major Sokka, unintentional but still hurtful, you could read this as pre-slash but nah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24692380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/Khashana, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/read%20by%20Khashana
Summary: Sokka doesn't like Zuko the first time they meet. Or the next five times. Seventh time's the charm, and Zuko's never getting rid of them now.
Relationships: Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Disrespect!verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782586
Comments: 42
Kudos: 767





	Keep

**Author's Note:**

> So I was FLOORED by the response to Disrespect. Y'all, that fic has shot up to my third most popular of all time, in both kudos and bookmarks, and seventh in comment threads. Couldn't have asked for a better welcome to the fandom, lol. This one doesn't hit as hard, but I hope y'all still enjoy it.  
> Thanks to my sensitivity readers and/or subject matter experts, only one of whom is even in this fandom:
> 
>   * lincyclopedia (autism)
>   * ravenreyamidala (mechanical engineering)
>   * willowoak_walker (sword class)
> 

> 
> [Podfic here](https://khashanakalashtar.wordpress.com/portfolio/keep/)

“So remember how I took that pentjak silat class last year? With Randal? And remember how he teaches unofficial classes at night? And one of them is swordfighting?”

“ _Yes_ , Sokka. You’ve only mentioned this a _million_ times.” Katara rolls her eyes. So sue him. It’s really cool, okay?

“Well, I haven’t heard anything about it,” pipes up Aang, Katara’s new friend from her oceanography class. (Who even takes oceanography? Katara and Aang, that’s who. But of course every time he teases her about it, she starts calling him a nerd for liking math.) “Is it fun?”

“It’s _amazing._ ”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s on Friday nights, first class was last night, and we all met up in the Great Hall, that’s just this big atrium thing in Taylor Hall, and Randal has this huge chest of swords we can borrow, and he taught us stuff like how to move and triangle points to make people fall, and then he came around to each of us and taught us specifics on the weapon we had. And then we switched to fake wooden swords for partner drills.”

“That does sound awesome!”

“It was _so_ awesome.” Sokka pauses, then decides he’s entitled to a little venting. “The only downside was the guy I was practicing with. Super unfriendly. Never looked at me the whole time. I tried to talk to him a little, just being friendly, and he wasn’t even paying attention. Didn’t, like, _say_ anything, just made me do all the talking and walked off when he was done.”

“Did you try asking him about himself?” Katara asks skeptically.

“Yeah! I was like, ‘what year are you in’ and he was just like, ‘sophomore.’” Sokka makes his voice growly and put-upon. It doesn’t sound anything like the guy, but he thinks he gets the point across. “And I asked him what his name was, same thing. ‘Zuko.’”

“Maybe he was just having a bad day,” Katara suggests. “You can try again next week.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Sokka remains unconvinced.

So far, Sokka _loves_ sophomore year. He will not admit it under torture, but it’s a relief having Katara here and not seven hours of travel away. Just knowing that he can randomly show up on her doorstep and make her life hell, and that he’ll get to meet her boyfriends in person, and not having to worry that she’s not okay and hiding it from him over the phone…it’s just better, okay? He only has to miss his dad (and his mom, but he always misses his mom) instead of his whole family.

Saturday afternoons Katara and Aang gather in Sokka’s dorm room, since he has a single, and do homework. They are _definitely_ keeping Aang, who actually suggested, _completely unprovoked by Sokka,_ that they watch James Cameron’s Avatar, which he found on DVD in the library. (Katara had buried her face in her hands and moaned dramatically. “What’s wrong?” “You’ve somehow hit on Sokka’s favorite movie in the world and we’re never getting him to shut up about it again.” “We’re TEAM AVATAR, baby!” “We are NOT calling ourselves that.”)

His classes are fascinating (even if Katara does make retching noises when he talks about diff eq), and Haru is in half of them so that’s chill. He’s taking silat again, for fun instead of for credit this time, and because he’s had the class already, he’s officially one of the Old Students and gets to help the New Students.

And swordfighting _would_ be awesome if it wasn’t for Zuko.

For some reason, he partners up with Sokka every week, never says anything unless Sokka asks him a direct question, and never looks at him. He doesn’t always sound as angry as that first class, that varies, but he never sounds _happy._ Sokka tries to talk to him the second week, to give him the benefit of the doubt, and for the next four weeks just to annoy him because Sokka has never claimed not to be a petty bitch.

On the seventh week, he gives up.

On the seventh week, he decides he’s had enough, and he talks to Zuko only as much as he has to. They finish the lesson, he packs up his practice sword, and they part ways as usual.

Except they don’t. Except Sokka is headed toward Uncommon Grounds to hang out with Haru and a couple other MechE guys when he hears his name.

“Sokka,” says Zuko, who is _following_ him, “is everything okay?”

Sokka stops dead in his tracks, completely dumbfounded.

“…What?” is all he manages after a couple seconds of fish-face.

Zuko’s looking at him, for once, but his eyes dart away again. He shrugs and flushes, just visible by the light from a nearby streetlamp.

“I’m not the most observant person in the world, but even I’m going to notice if somebody who usually talks a lot doesn’t say anything for an entire lesson.”

“I do not talk a lot!” is all Sokka has to say about this, because _what?_

“You talk to _me_ a lot,” says Zuko, shrugging uncomfortably. “Sorry if that’s rude.”

Sokka has absolutely no idea what is going on with this conversation.

“Dude, you’re rude to me literally all the time. You clearly hate my guts or something.”

Zuko flinches, wrapping his arms around himself. “What? No! Of course not.”

“You never talk! You basically ignore me all the time! I’ve been trying to get a rise out of you for weeks, and today I gave up!”

Zuko actually takes a step back. His eyes flick up to meet Sokka’s, and then away again. “You’ve been trying to get a rise out of me,” he repeats to himself. And then, “I need to go.” He turns away.

Sokka is not letting him walk away from this conversation with this many questions still hanging in the air. He lunges forward and grabs Zuko’s wrist. Zuko whips it away again, breaking Sokka’s grip easily, but he stops trying to leave.

“Dude, what is going on? If you don’t hate me, how come you never look at me, or contribute to the conversation, or literally anything to indicate you don’t want me to fall off a cliff?”

“I’M AUTISTIC!” roars Zuko, and, oh.

_Oh._

“I don’t just _know_ when you want me to add to the conversation like allistic people do, I have to memorize scripts or it ends up being a guessing game, and I’m not doing so hot, okay, I don’t have the energy to figure it out! And _I can’t make eye contact all the time!_ ”

Sokka is starting to get the sinking feeling that somehow he’s the asshole here.

“I thought I’d finally found somebody willing to hold up the conversation so I didn’t have to kill myself figuring out what I was supposed to say, and all this time you’ve just been trying to _get a rise out of me._ ”

Shit.

“I didn’t know!” Sokka defends himself. “This would not have happened if you’d just told me.”

“ _I don’t owe you my diagnosis for you not to make fun of me.”_

Annnnnd he can’t argue with that. Well, most of it.

“Not making fun. I promise I wasn’t doing that. Like, I thought my talking annoyed you, so I was trying to annoy you more.”

“…I’m not sure that’s better.”

“Fair enough. Look. Zuko. I’m really sorry I didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt, and if you actually like me talking your ear off, I can totally keep doing that. I can, like, prompt you when I want a longer answer, if that would help. I mean, if you’d want that. If not, that’s totally fine.”

“No,” Zuko interrupts. “That’d be nice, actually.”

“So can we start over?”

“Start what over?”

…Their friendship? But they aren’t friends, are they? Well, they are now.

“…You know what, I have no idea. Come hang out tomorrow afternoon, if you’re going to be friends with me you have to meet Katara and Aang.”

He tells Zuko to come by a little later than Katara and Aang normally do, in order to give them a heads up. They show up as usual and steal his bed, also as usual, and Sokka fidgets with his notebook. He steels himself for their inevitable bewilderment and says, “So guys, listen, I invited Zuko to come by.”

Katara frowns at him. “Rude sword class guy?”

“Yeah.”

“…Why?”

“So it turns out he wasn’t trying to be hard to get along with. He just didn’t realize how he was coming off. He’s ten kinds of social awkward.” Somehow he doesn’t want to out Zuko. Something about the way he said _I don’t owe you my diagnosis._ “So basically you’ve gotta assume that he doesn’t know if he’s expected to say something, and ask him direct if he doesn’t. And don’t expect him to look you in the eyes.”

“What do you mean, he doesn’t know if he’s expected to say something?” asks Katara.

Sokka’s been thinking about this, going over all their interactions in his head.

“Like, when I asked him if he liked it here. He just said yeah. You and I know when that’s enough and when you’ve gotta add one or two things you like about it. Zuko doesn’t. So I think I needed to actually _say_ ‘like what.’ It’s not being pushy, with him.”

“Huh.” Katara looks puzzled. Aang does not, but Sokka doesn’t ask.

“Oh, and, uh. Forewarning: he’s got a giant scar covering half his face.”

“From _what?_ ”

“Didn’t ask, Aang. Kind of none of my business.”

“Yeah…”

They lapse into quiet. Sokka pulls out his pset and groans at the sheer number of complicated truss problems. Professor Piandao is a sadist.

A knock on the doorframe makes them look up.

“Hi,” says Zuko. “Zuko here.” He waves at them a little. It is _painfully_ awkward, and Sokka needs to _smother_ this guy in friendship.

“Hi!” says Aang. “I’m Aang. This is Katara.”

“And you already know my dumbass brother,” says Katara, waving. “Come, pick a patch of bedspread. There’s plenty of room.”

“Sokka’s not a dumbass,” says Zuko, and does as bidden. “He’s picking up sword incredibly quickly, and he’s really perceptive and strategic.”

There’s a beat of silence as they all stare at him.

“You got all that from sparring with me for seven weeks?”

“Not just that. From your stories too. I know you were just trying to irritate me, but I _was_ listening.” He hunches his shoulders defensively.

“I don’t even remember what I said to you,” Sokka admits.

“A lot about your dad and your sister. How Suki showed you up in silat last semester. How you seduced Yue when you were fifteen and had a ‘whirlwind winter romance.’ I was waiting for you to tell me how you split up, but you never did. It seemed like it would have been dramatic.”

Sokka sobers. Katara looks down at her lap.

Aang notices. “Wait, what just happened?”

“Yeah, I was only telling you the parts that are good for light conversation,” admits Sokka. “Yue was killed in a car accident two months in. That’s why it was a whirlwind.”

Aang makes a punched noise.

“I’m sorry,” says Zuko quietly, and he looks it. “That’s rough.”

They study until dinner, and then eat together, and it’s only after that that Sokka sends Katara a text.

_So Zuko’s cool right?_

It’s a minute before she responds.

_IDK. He seems nice but you’ve been complaining about him for WEEKS and now all is forgiven just like that?_

Sokka is vaguely aware that ‘ _just like that_ ’ is not a helpful response, but he sends it anyway for lack of any better ideas.

 _I’ll give him a shot,_ Katara says at last, and Sokka fist pumps. That’s all he can ask for. He’ll convince her that they need to keep Zuko soon enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Silat is a real martial art, and Randal is a real teacher (the only one in the US iirc) of both that and swords. It's basically connective tissue bending; half the time you don't know _why_ you can't move that limb anymore. Randal has managed to throw many of us on the ground without even touching us via sneaking a hand up into our peripheral vision and triggering our flinch reflex in just the right direction.  
> Katara's POV is coming up next, and we get back into the painful shit. (To what degree is yet unknown, we'll see what the fic wants.)  
> You can follow me on tumblr [@khashanakalashtar](https://khashanakalashtar.tumblr.com/); I reblog a lot of ATLA and occasionally fic thoughts (this verse is [tagged/disrespect-verse](https://khashanakalashtar.tumblr.com/tagged/disrespect-verse).)


End file.
